'Sewer Creatures' Mystery Solved

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'Sewer Creatures' Mystery Solved

The weird-looking "sewer creature" spotted in a YouTube video is nothing more than a colony of tubifex worms, according to city officials in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The creepy clip (embedded above), which shows a camera getting up close and personal with what appears to be a pulsating glob of slime (or maybe a sewer-dwelling Horta), drew the attention of city officials after sci-fi blog io9 wrote about the video in a post headlined: "Video Footage Surfaces of North Carolina Sewer Creatures."

The worms live in sewage and pond sediment, a Raleigh official News 14 Carolina, but the video makes them look unnatural. "They seem to respond to the light from the camera," said Ed Buchan, environmental coordinator at the Raleigh Public Utilities Department. "That light is pretty hot."

While the worms are a natural part of life in the sewer, Buchan said spotting them is still somewhat rare. "I've seen a lot of sewer TV before and I've never seen them," he said. "We were surprised. We didn't know immediately what it was."